Radar goes undercover to find out just how far a famous name will take you

Everyone knows that having a famous last name can score an unqualified scion plum Hollywood roles, corporate board seats—even the U.S. presidency (we're looking your way, John Quincy Adams). But can it get Larry King's young son, a clown, a mime, and a magician a prime table at Spago Beverly Hills for his birthday party? In the spirit of Radar Magazine's May/June cover story on Hollywood nepotism, Teddy Wayne tested this and a few other scenarios, posing as representatives for the fictional Mark Quiznos (of Quiznos Subs), George Lucas, and Madonna, and calling various institutions of power and prestige in academia, politics, and publishing. The results of Radar's prank confirmed what we feared about America: Well-known surnames supersede all others.

It should be noted that each of the targets (anonymity preserved) was just doing his or her job; hate the game, not the player (or, in this case, the played).

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Call to Senator Frank Lautenberg's (NJ) office on behalf of George Lucas' (fictional) daughter, Amelia:

RADAR: I'm the assistant to George Lucas, and his daughter Amelia is a freshman at UCLA this year. She's interested in an internship this summer in your D.C. office, and we had some questions.
Sure, absolutely. Does she have any Jersey connections? I'm curious how she picked Senator Lautenberg's office.

She's interested in moving to the tristate area someday.
Yeah, definitely. We're accepting summer internship applications now. The normal application materials are a résumé, a cover letter, then a brief writing sample, three to five pages.

Could it be from anything?
Something that best shows the applicant's writing ability.

I don't know how much writing she's done at school. She's a freshman, and she's not in any writing-intensive classes. She's more sort of fashion and communications focused. Is fashion copy applicable?
Sure, whatever she has that she thought was a good piece of writing. It doesn't have to be directly related to politics, like the Iraq war.

She's doing fashion this year, and it's definitely not going to be Iraq. It's more like advertising copy you'd see in a fashion magazine—in good language. I've seen a sample along the way.
That's totally fine. We do a lot of press in the office, too, so a lot of shorter writing, short sentences that cater to a specific audience and have a specific tone.

And do you have cutoffs for GPAs?
Not really.

Because she's not doing so well this semester in her studies. There's a chance she might be able to transfer, or drop out of UCLA for a year or two. Do you accept them if they're not current college students still?
Yeah, I think that would be a possibility.

So, even if she's flunked out and is taking time off to think about her options for her future, it might be a possibility still?
It would not exclude her.

About the number of days a week—she's kind of insistent that it might be a maximum two days a week, maybe one, if possible. Can you handle a shorter workload like that?
Yeah, it varies, really. We have different options for interns. I don't think that would exclude her. I can tell you that the more time the interns put in, the better experience they get.

Between you and me, my sense is she's looking for an excuse to spend a summer in D.C. and party a bit.
Okay.

I'm reading between the lines here—that's why I think she's asking for the one or two days a week maximum.
So you're saying she's not really that interested in politics?

I think she's interested, but she's in trouble with her dad about flunking out, and I think this is a way to get in his good graces. She needs a legitimate reason to go somewhere else for the summer and be away from the parents.
Really. Does her father know this, or you know her ...

I know her, and I think her father's willing to approve it if it's a legitimate internship. I actually think it's the kind of thing she could get really into, but like I said, she's a fashion student.
So, she's kind of looking to get away and she's looking at D.C.—she has an interest here ...

Yeah, I think New York City would be too blatant, and D.C. is sort of a happy medium.
The question for me is do you think she would want to be here and do what we asked her to do?

If she worked one day a week, she'd definitely do what you asked and you wouldn't regret hiring her. The other six days a week she'd be partying, but she'd take her one day of work a week seriously, knowing that it would eventually get back to her father. And we could certainly keep up a liaison between you and me so you could report back.
Well, this is new for me! But I think it's worth her sending her stuff over and we'll take a look at it.

Her father would, at some point over the summer, probably visit her. Would there be a opening in the senator's schedule when they could meet him?
Most likely, I'm sure he'd be interested in something like that. I can't guarantee anything because I'm not in charge of his schedule, but I imagine he would be very interested.

Great. Amelia also wanted to know if there were a bunch of younger women in the office she could hang out with.
Yeah, it's a younger crowd.